Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Climate Science: the same destiny of "The Limits to Growth"?

Posted by
Ugo Bardi

Studies of resource depletion, such as "The Limits to Growth" of 1972 were attacked and demonized in the 1980s, and then consigned to the dustbin of "wrong" scientific ideas. Now it is the turn of climate science to be attacked and demonized. Two parallel stories unfolding at different times .

In the 1950s, the mineral depletion problem and the climate problem started to be recognized. In 1956 Marion King Hubbert published the first study that examined worldwide oil depletion; suggesting the model that today takes his name; the "Hubbert Model". At about the same time, in 1957, Roger Revelle coauthored with Hans Suess the first paper that noted that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was increasing as a result of the combustion of fossil fuels and pointing out the related climatic effects.

Both climate studies and oil depletion studies dealt with complex, non linear systems, so that quantitative estimates of future trends became possible only with the development of digital computers, starting in the late 1960s. The first general circulation models (GCM) was developed at NASA's NOAA in the late 1960s. The first world model that examined the world's economic system in light of resource depletion was published by Jay Forrester in 1971, with the title "World Dynamics". One year later, in 1972, the more detailed study "The Limits to Growth" appeared. These events marked a rapid growth of two new fields of research: "Climate Science" and "World Modeling".

Already the 1972 study, "The Limits to Growth" had identified the main elements and the behavior of the world system. Here is the basic result from that study.

As you see, the model had already identified the "tipping points" of the system; where the gradual depletion of natural resources and the increase in pollution would lead to the collapse of the industrial and agricultural production and, later on, to the collapse of population. The choice made to build this model were to "aggregate" most of the variables involved, that is to lump them together to limit the unavoidable uncertainties when dealing with single variables. Lacking sufficient data to build a very detailed model, the approach of "The Limits to Growth" study was heuristic and oriented to the understanding of the system's behavior, rather than to making exact predictions.

On the other side of simulations, climate scientists found themselves facing the high complexity of the world's climate, for which they often lacked sufficient data. The result was that climate modeling grew together with a substantial experimental effort dedicated to measuring the parameters of the system. Several of these parameters required extensive studies to be understood and quantified. With time, models grew in sophistication, just as the data in input became more detailed and reliable. Perhaps because of this very sophistication, the models had troubles in addressing the question of "tipping points", abrupt changes that could result from enhancing feedbacks within the climate system. The result has been a tradition of presenting the results of climate models as smooth and continuous curves. Here are, for instance, the curves for the temperature rise in the first IPCC report in 1990.

The results of the simulations haven't changed very much in the latest IPCC report, in 2007. Now, here is the difference in the two fields of research: World modeling, with its vision of collapse, seemed to provide a more immediate and more worrisome threat than the smooth curves of climate science. This difference had consequences.

We know what happened to the iconic study of world modeling: "The Limits to Growth" of 1972. It appeared threatening enough to many people that it underwent a series of political attacks in the 1980s that moved it to the dustbin of the "wrong" scientific theories. The problem was not just the demonization of a single study, but the fact that an entire scientific field was cast in bad light and that led to the nearly total disappearance of research funds in the area. Only in recent years we are seeing world modeling laboriously trying to re-emerge as a legitimate field of study.

The problem with climate science, however, is that its vision of the problem has gradually become more and more dramatic. With the Northern Ice Cap on its way to complete melting, drought, floods, and hurricanes, the question of abrupt climate change can't be ignored any more. Scenarios that take tipping points into account start to look even more worrisome than those provided by world modeling in the 1970s.

So, it may not be casual that we are seeing a reaction against climate science very similar to the one seen in the 1980s against world modeling. Apparently, people do not like to see threatening scenarios and many lobbies feel that such studies are bad for business. As a consequence, a concerted effort is being carried out in order to demonize climate science and climate scientists in the eyes of the public and to make the whole story look like a joke or, worse, a purposeful hoax. If anything, the present attacks against climate science are more aggressive and violent than any attack against world modeling has been. Today, demonization technologies are much better known and refined than they were in the 1980s. The "Climategate" fabrication, for instance, is a true masterpiece in how to deceive the public.

So, what we are seeing are two parallel stories unfolding at different times. It is not impossible that climate science will go the same way as world modeling did in the 1980s: demonized and riduculed by a concerted and well financed political attack and subsequently removed from the pool of legitimate fields of study. If that happens, we may very well lose a couple of decades before realizing that studying climate science was important. By then, it will be surely too late.

Perhaps, however, the recent wave of symptoms of climate change, from hurricanes to melting ice caps, will make the problem so clear that it will spare climate science from the fate of demonization that befell on world modeling. However, the anti-science campaign is still going on and we lost already a lot of time. Is it too late? Only time will tell.

9 comments:

[typo, can you fix the date? "...very much in the latest IPCC report, in 200?"]

Have you seen the review of the biography of Rachel Carson in the NY Review of Books? The same attacks on her personally and environmentalism generally neutralized the steps inspired by "Silent Spring" - supposedly made to regulate pollution - the Clean Air Act etc.. It's a pathetic fantasy that we have controlled it; "regulation" means promulgating rules and laws that make it "look" like the ecosystem is being protected but really, industries and government agencies are just playing a game - no different than they do with banks.

As the saying goes, history doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme. I don't think climate science will suffer the same fate as world modeling, because there are too many people invested in climate change. Limits to Growth seems like it was always on the fringe. Of course, that large following presents the danger of morphing climate change from science into dogma. Also, the current practice of using models that require expensive supercomputers presents another source of vulnerability; it doesn't need to be discredited to be dropped due to budgetary concerns.

Yes, climate science too already has been demonized, just as had been the case for the old Limits to Growth book and some of its inevitable conclusions. (and for many of the same or similar reasons) The difference is that the effects of climate change are now much more visible and pronounced and focused, (and therefore starting to be intellectually -as well as physically of course - inescapable) whereas the more general and diffuse effects of the planet now being at 140% of its carrying capacity (in terms of its sources and sinks and the LTG narrative) are perhaps still somewhat less visible or apparent.

I think of Climate Change as a subset of the broader Limits to Growth problem or issue (falling in the "sinks" area), though naturally with its own particular characteristics. (and perhaps Peak Oil also can be viewed profitably as yet another such problem or issue, falling in the "sources" area)

In my own opinion (which I already have expressed elsewhere in a Cassandra Legacy post by the title "An Alternate History of Limits to Growth") it was inevitable and probably also foreseeable that social and political opposition of various types i.e. "demonization", would arise with respect to any movement - implemented either through the publishing of books or through any other forms of information or through political or social movements - which would raise the alarm to any of the preceding phenomena.

In my earlier other post I described what I thought were the generic reasons for this opposition and the various categories of political and economic interests which were being threatened and which surely would react in some way or another. But is all of this very surprising? Did Galieleo ever think that his new ideas would NOT elicit opposition from the Roman Catholic Church of the times? So why should scientists today who are explaining Limits to Growth or Climate Change expect anything different from today's high priests and ideologues of economics, politics, business, academia and the media?

And what if everyone would agree that climate change is a real and very serious threat? Any means must include changing socio-economic system globally(!) in order to reduce material consumption in time without socio-economic catastrophe. Lacking that everything else is a waste of time. What is the probability of that voluntary change? Close to zero I suppose: our way of life is non-negotiable. Ergo - pseudo solutions (to have the cake and to eat it), or ignoring the threat (we have to adapt).

Yes, science and techno science are perceived to be about knowledge, and techno-science or technology about "usefulness" and "progress" (even though weaponry has always been a main driver in this domain and even in science one could say). And not only climate science and limits to growth do not provide anything in the "usefulness" domain, but more or less they point to the whole techno science adventure being at the root of the "problems" they describe. A very peculiar situation for sure.

I'm working on a writing project, looking at how monetary systems really work - but believing that a proper understanding of our monetary system gives us the tools to help take effective action against climate change, or at least to mitigate some of the things that are accentuating it. Presently we (in Australia) think of money as being a solution, rather than simply being a tool at our disposal - perhaps you in Europe are a little more advanced in your thinking! Of all the things that interact in our world system, money has the virtue of being abstract and subject to our complete control - someone elsewhere descibed it as a system of rules. The thing that we have most control over has no substance, yet I wonder whether it can be used as a tool to begin to tackle the physical things - climate change, peak oil, pollution...

I'm not so naive as to believe in solutions - this is a situation (with no fully acceptable solution), not a problem (which can be fully solved). But I do believe that it is possible to make changes, that help to mitigate our world systems problems from what they might otherwise be...

Well, thanks, Andrew. I am also working on the concept of money. It is very simple: money is everything in our world. The only hope we have to survive is to use money; otherwise we'll keep being defeated in our efforts.

Who

Ugo Bardi is a member of the Club of Rome and the author of "Extracted: how the quest for mineral resources is plundering the Planet" (Chelsea Green 2014)

Ugo Bardi's blog

The depletion of the cheap ores which we have been extracting up to now is at the root of our economic problems.

Extracted

A report to the Club of Rome published by Chelsea Green. (click on image for a link)

Solarino

Cassandra

This blog was known as "Cassandra's Legacy" up to March 2014. It has changed name, but not its ideas. And don't forget that Cassandra's prophecies always turned out to be right!

About the author

Ugo Bardi teaches physical chemistry at the University of Florence, in Italy. He is interested in resource depletion, system dynamics modeling, climate science and renewable energy. Contact: ugo.bardi(littlewhirlything)unifi.it.